The difficult task of efficiently planning urban utilities and services like Solid Waste Management (SWM) is further complicated when it comes to historic religious cities – places where organic roads layouts, significant in-flow of tourists, large scale religious events, and public ideologies compound the issues. The research aims to formulate an integrated methodology that can help urban planners to compare different SWM plans and then chose the most suitable SWM plan for such a religious city. The integrated methodology is formulated through a thorough review of the literature, including waste projections, waste composition, primary & secondary collection methods, secondary storage, treatment of waste, and disposal of waste. The methodology includes waste projection method (based on different typologies of the population), strategy selection method (which can rate different strategies on parameters like overall cost, environmentfriendliness, responsiveness to public ideology and participation, and involvement of informal workers), and landfill projection method (for waste disposal). To demonstrate the methodology's application, the religious city of Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, is taken as a case study. The analyses and proposals for the case study city include waste projections, waste segregation, collection mechanism, facilities for storage, treatment, and disposal using the formulated methodology.

Keywords : Solid Waste Management, Religious City, Multi Criterion Decision Analysis Varanasi, Religious Waste, Environment Friendly, Informal Workers, Public Participation Etc